South to America: A Journey Below the Mason Dixon to Understand the Soul of a Nation

Religion, especially Christianity, plays an important role in the lives of Black and white Southerners. However, approaches to the faith often vary along racial and political lines. For example, right-wing, white, evangelical Christianity, however, may promote and enshrine bigotry, including white supremacy. Perry writes of contrasting views of deity, stating that white evangelicals worship the “God of masters” while Black Southerners worship the “God of slaves.”

The idea of the “God of masters” appears throughout the South and not only excuses colonialism and enslavement but also embraces the benefits of their legacies in the form of land, wealth, status, and privilege that are afforded to many white Southerners. White people who live in poverty also reap the benefits of the “God of masters,” as Perry’s encounter with an evangelical Lyft driver in Charlottesville, Virginia, demonstrates. The Lyft driver tells her that she was once rich and married. She lost her wealth and her husband, but she became a born-again, evangelical Christian. Evangelicalism provided her with hope. She tells Perry that being saved means “[…] we will rise with him like kings and queens in heaven” (50). Perry privately wonders over whom the woman believes she will rule.